


The Impossible - Missing Scenes

by J_D_McCormick



Category: The Impossible | Lo Imposible (2012)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Let me know if there is, Missing Scenes, disaster survival, i honestly dont know if there needs to be additional warnings or anything, tsunami
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 13:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18801508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_D_McCormick/pseuds/J_D_McCormick
Summary: "The day after Christmas, 2004, a family's idyllic holiday turns into an incomprehensible nightmare when a terrifying roar rises from the depths of the sea, followed by a wall of black water that devours everything in its path."Missing scenes from The Impossible (2012).





	1. The Wave - Henry

**Author's Note:**

> The Impossible is one of my favourite movies, an absolutely beautiful and heartwrenching piece of cinema that makes me cry without fault every time I watch it. Having watched it a few times, there's various scenes that are either missing, or which I'd love to explore myself in written form - so I decided to put up this little collection for when I have the time to drabble down some writing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry laughs happily as Lucas wades out of the pool, complaining, and goes chasing after the rubber ball. Thomas and Simon are still yelling and splashing, bouncing in the water, impatient for their brother to return with their new ball so they can continue the game. The sun is bright, the water is warm, and there is only a gentle breeze – utter paradise.
> 
> Then, there’s a strange noise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A first foray into missing scenes; following Henry as the wave hits and he's split from his sons.

Henry laughs happily as Lucas wades out of the pool, complaining, and goes chasing after the rubber ball. Thomas and Simon are still yelling and splashing, bouncing in the water, impatient for their brother to return with their new ball so they can continue the game. The sun is bright, the water is warm, and there is only a gentle breeze – utter paradise.

Then, there’s a strange noise.

A few people go quiet as they pause to try and pinpoint the noise. It is low, barely even audible – they feel it more than hear it. Then it is overshadowed by the calls of birds, and Henry takes his eyes off Lucas to look up at them as they fly overhead, colourful and exotic and… all flying in the same direction. Not a flock; Henry could pick out different types of birds, all flying together, all calling and chattering loudly, criss-crossing each other’s paths but all undeniably moving in the same direction.

“Look at all the birds Daddy!” Simon says, pointing up at the colourful creatures and tugging at Henry’s hand.

“I see them, wee-man.” Henry murmurs, but there’s an unease to the air that he can’t throw off and he can’t share his youngest son’s excitement and awe.

“Why are they all flying away?” Thomas mumbles, pressing himself to Henry’s hip.

The odd noise is audible again, louder now as everyone at the poolside goes quiet. It’s a rumbling, roaring sound, like bulldozers in the distance. Another sound joins it – a scream half lost to the air, barely more than a sigh in the breeze but Henry can just pick it out. Simon seems to pick up on the tense quiet then and starts grabbing at Henry’s arm, trying to hide behind it and press himself close. There is a creaking and snapping sound, like an old tree branch falling, and the roaring sound is getting louder, louder, closer Henry realises as there are more snaps and more screams, and now he can see palm trees on the beachside just outside the resort falling over. The sound is like a plane engine by this point. Simon and Thomas both grip at his hands as tightly as they can, and then a black mass appears over the top of the resort hotels.

“Henry! The boys!” He hears Maria shout, and he instinctively grips hard to Simon and Thomas and tugs them in close. He remembers Lucas, no longer by his side in the pool, and casts his eyes towards him. He is staring, fixated, at the black wall that towers over the roofs and looms ever closer, red ball still in hand.

“Lucas!” He yells as he bends to scoop Thomas and Simon into his arms. Simon whimpers – Thomas wraps his arms around his neck and clings. Lucas turns to him, eyes wide, the trance broken.

“Dad!” He calls back. Henry hears the – whatever it is – crash into the buildings, like a wave from an angry sea against a rock, and that’s when he realises the strange mass is water. He hopes that Lucas will start running towards him and Maria – he should be able to, already out of the pool – and turns to try and wade his way back towards his wife, feeling his heart pound as the drag stops him from running like every nerve is telling him to. He can hear the rushing of water behind him, that rumbling, crashing sound, and he wraps his arms around his children as tight as he can.

“Daddy!” He hears Thomas shriek in his ear, and then the wave hits them.

It’s like being hit by a truck. Henry feels his whole body bow and bend to the force of the wave, has a moment of feeling almost airborne before everything is water. He can still hear it rushing, churning, powering forwards, can still hear the dulled sounds of breaking wood and crumbling stone, but he can’t see anything. He had gasped a breath at the impact of the water, and that is all he has now, some small amount of oxygen that his body is already begging to release. He kicks and flails as the current drags him, unable to tell which way is up and which is down, able only to try and battle the power forcing him to its bidding. It’s then that he realises he no longer has his arms around Simon, but he can feel Thomas’ hands scrabbling to keep their grip on his neck. He tries to grab at his son as he kicks, trying desperately to right himself and stop the endless tumbling, spinning, rolling. His chest impacts with something hard, something that feels like the edge of a roof, and he coughs out the breath he had desperately tried to hold onto. Immediately his lungs attempt to suck in air but there is only water, water that tastes like mud and grit and salt, water which he attempts to cough up only for it to be replaced by more.

Suddenly he’s thrown upwards, out of the water, given just a second to cough out liquid and gasp in air before he splashes back down and tumbles under again.  He has brief impressions of chairs, railings, rocks, walls, trees, as they spin by him in the water. His chest convulses, still half full of mud and water but he refuses to lose the precious air he’s managed to take in. Something impacts with his face, slamming right into his eye, and he flails away from the pain. He is half aware of debris scratching at him, slamming into him, poking into his flesh and scraping across his skin, but his whole world is this wave, this huge wash of seawater, this murky brown hell everything has become. Thomas isn’t holding onto him anymore. He finally coughs up the water and air and thinks then that he might die.

He hits into something – a mass of flotsam, broken wood and smashed panes and sunbathing chairs. For a moment he goes limp, head pounding and sound starting to fade, letting the sea carry him as it pleases. It only presses him harder into the collection of rubble, and turns him on his back. He can see the rippled light of the sun and suddenly his body is in motion again as he struggles desperately towards it, kicking his legs against the water and scrabbling at the pile of debris and finally he gets his head above the water again. He gasps, coughs up more water, and gasps again, his chest heaving, his whole body shaking violently. He wraps his arms around a plank of wood wedged into the pile, for a moment only able to gasp for air and vomit water.

It feels like he should be crying from pain and fear, but Henry finds that he can’t. There isn’t much pain, only the racing of his heart, the gasping of his lungs, and the roar of the water all around him. He is terrified, but all he can do is cough and gasp and make wordless shouts on every exhale, primal noises with no meaning but pure fear. It’s like he’s a child again, helpless and scared and wanting desperately to be saved and held and comforted, wanting his mother to scoop him out of the raging waters and take him home, take him where it’s safe, and reassure him that it’s alright now…

It makes him think of Simon and Thomas, of Lucas, of Maria, and a whole new fear grips him. Not the fear of the waves, of feeling his body breathe in only muddy water, of being battered and smashed and cut by debris – the fear of losing his family. His children. His wife. He was a father, he was meant to be there for his children, protect them and comfort them, and he’d let them go. They’d been swept away by the water, out of his arms. Simon is only five, has never swum in anything except a calm and clear pool, with Henry only an arm’s length away. He was so small, so fragile; if the wave had swept Henry off his feet, powerless, and pummelled him against rock and building and tree, what must it have done to Simon? That draws a cry from him, a mournful wail.

“Simon!” He cries, trying to peer at the water passing by. “Simon! Thomas! Simon!”

He keeps screaming their names, and it’s not until his voice is so hoarse he can barely make a sound that he realises the water has gone calm. He pauses, quiet, looks at the pieces of bed and parasol and roof that float almost serenely past him. He wonders if it might be over. He scrambles against his pile of debris, to try and look around.

Then the roaring starts again. Henry feels his heartrate pick up, convinced that in a moment his heart will simply beat its way out of his chest and be swept away like everything else. He looks around desperately, trying to find the source of that terrible sound and then – a second wave, rushing towards him, and he takes the deepest breath he can and tries to duck behind the little island he has attached himself to.

It’s blown to pieces in an instant. He’s tumbling again, somersaults and backflips, bent and twisted to the will of the ocean. He tries to curl himself up small, to avoid as much of the sharp wood and rock as he can, but it still batters his body. At one point he realises he is being dragged along the ground, and he kicks his way upwards, catching a current that brings him to the surface. He gasps in a new breath, and fights to swim and stay above the water as it carries him. It’s hard, as currents try to drag him down again, water splashing up over his head and into his face, into his mouth. He can hardly see with the gritty seawater stinging his eyes, but he can see blurred shapes of buildings and trees still standing. Eventually he impacts with one and manages to hold onto it, wrapping his arms and legs around the trunk and clinging there, feeling the power of the wave tug at him.

He holds on, and shuts his eyes against the water. His tears are lost to the endless, encroaching ocean.


	2. The Wave - Thomas & Simon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas notices the rippling of the pool before anything else. He can see where the water vibrates off the edge – like the way the ripples fan out from where he and his father are stood in the pool. Only, the poolside is not moving. It shouldn’t be, anyway.  
> -  
> Simon looks over at Thomas, but he’s watching their dad, quiet and still. He’s annoyed that the fun has stopped, but then he looks around and notices everyone is quiet and still, even Lucas and, when he turns, his mother. That makes him pause.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some bits and pieces of this are taken from/inspired by further accounts by Maria Belon, which you can find in the end notes of this chapter. Thomas' segment is quite small, as there's little extra information on him from the Belon-Alverez accounts, and in the movie he doesn't seem to have any particular or identifying injuries.

Thomas notices the rippling of the pool before anything else. He can see where the water vibrates off the edge – like the way the ripples fan out from where he and his father are stood in the pool. Only, the poolside is not moving. It shouldn’t be, anyway.

“Look at all the birds, Daddy!” Simon says, and Thomas looks up at the sky to see flocks of birds, all flying away from the beach. Somewhere in him he finds it odd that they are all flying in exactly the same direction, a straight line away from the coast.

“I see them, wee-man.” His father murmurs. Thomas looks up at his face, and his brows are pulled together, the corners of his lips slightly turned down. His father looks worried, and Thomas is worried too.

“Why are they all flying away?” He murmurs, pressing close to his father’s side. The man’s hand goes to his shoulder, his thumb rubbing the skin there gently, an automatic comfort. It doesn’t work for long, as Thomas hears the rumbling that gets louder and louder. When he hears one of the screams he whimpers in fear, tugging at his father’s hand. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but he doesn’t like it.

The sound reaches a deafening volume, and Thomas raises one hand to press over his ears. That’s when the black wall appears, and he stares and stares at this strange monster as it crashes down over the beach houses. Then his father yanks him up off his feet, into his arms, and Thomas clings as hard as he can. He’s afraid, but his dad is with him and that helps a little. He watches back over his father’s shoulder as he tries to run, watches the black wave approach closer and closer, towering above him.

“Daddy!” He screams, trying to pull back from this terror that is suddenly starting to spatter his face, and then his mouth is full of salt water. He tries to cough it out but more rushes in every time he opens his mouth. He tries to scream for his father, clinging as tight as he can to him. He can feel things hitting him and he can feel the violent way his father is being flung about, and him dragged alongside. There’s a jolt – suddenly, his father’s body stops moving with his, and it happens so suddenly that Thomas’ fingers slip from their grip.

Thomas’ body spasms violently as it attempts to cough out water. He swallows a lot of it, every time he opens his mouth to try and expel it and more simply rushes in. In the black of the water and through the stinging of the salt in his eyes, he has hardly been able to see anything, but now somehow everything is getting darker. He wants his dad. He wants his mum. His body tries to cry but it can’t around the violent retching motions.

Then suddenly, he can’t hear the water around him anymore. He coughs, and water actually comes out – he coughs again and again and again, emptying his lungs of liquid and desperately gasping air. The whole world feels like it spins, but that is no change from a few minutes prior. He can feel a pressure on his chest and arms, like he’s lying on something… he can see only brown, a little green, and the endless black below him, still rushing and roaring.

“Dad!” He yells, hoarse from coughing. “Daddy! Daddy! Help! Daddy, help!”

The world still spins and Thomas feels sick to his stomach as he grips onto whatever it is he’s landed on. Now that he’s no longer inhaling water he cries, long screaming wails for help and comfort. None comes, and a strange tiredness grips him. It frightens him, and he tries to keep crying, keep calling for his father to come for him, but it slips away from him and everything is again a deep, terrifying black.

 

* * *

 

Simon is entranced by the birds as they fly overhead, and he frowns and pouts when his dad doesn’t respond in the excited tone he’d hoped for. His father keeps staring up after the birds and Simon huffs, splashing the water a bit. Then there’s a weird noise, and his father turns to pay attention to that. Simon looks over at Thomas, but he’s watching their dad, quiet and still. He’s annoyed that the fun has stopped, but then he looks around and notices everyone is quiet and still, even Lucas and, when he turns, his mother. That makes him pause.

The noise is still there, like the roar of a monster. The way everyone stares in its direction makes him wonder if they are scared of this monster that he can hear – he takes his father’s hand and presses himself close to him, trying to hide and take shelter under his arm. His dad presses him a little closer, and that’s almost more scary, the fact that his dad wants him close and quiet. He tugs on his hand, wanting to be picked up and held. He’s scared now.

The monster appears over the hotels, huge and black and looming, roaring so loud Simon can hardly hear anything else. He cries out, grabbing for his dad, and then he’s scooped up, his back pressed to his father’s chest. He looks up and sees his mother, crouched against a pane of glass, watching with horror as the monster approaches. Then everything seems to be gone.

He’s too afraid to cry for a long moment – something primal in him clamps his throat shut, stops him from opening his mouth as he feels water surround him. His father’s arm disappears from around him and that strikes a deep fear into Simon, deeper than anything he’s felt before, an absolute terror he can’t compare to anything else. Still, his throat stays tight, holding the burning breath in his lungs, and his eyes clamp closed. It’s dark, and his world is nothing but that for what feels like forever, darkness and spinning. He thinks a few things hit him, but he isn’t truly aware of them.

Then suddenly there’s light behind his eyelids and his head is above the water, sound no longer dulled by it. He tips his head upwards and gasps for breath, flailing his arms and kicking his legs in an attempt to stay at the surface. He opens his eyes and cries out as they sting, for a moment forcing him to squeeze them shut again.

“Help!” He cries out, throwing his hands out in a blind attempt to find someone, anyone, to help him. “Mummy! Daddy!”

In the water, his hand finds skin, and he scrabbles to hold onto it. “Help! Help!” He cries, and manages to latch onto the arm of this person, this only other person in this world of water. They don’t reply but he clutches on anyway. He’s swept along with them until they suddenly come to a stop, and Simon is held still only by his grip on them. He shouts, afraid that he might lose them, and tries to find another handhold. He finds the bark of a tree, where the other person must have grabbed a hold, and manages to wrap an arm around it. There are branches, and he scrambles to pull himself over one. He’s still holding onto the hand of the person he’s managed to grab.

For the first time, he really thinks about how oddly quiet and still they are. They haven’t said anything to him – he hasn’t even heard them gasping for breath. They’re not holding his hand where he’s holding theirs. He tentatively squeezes it – there’s no response. Simon raises his other hand to rub at his eyes, trying to get the water and mud from them so he can open his eyes and see.

The person is draped over the branch Simon has managed to climb onto. They are face down, still mostly in the water. There is dark red covering their hair and running down the back of their neck, and other cuts and scrapes leak the same colour. They do not move, do not try to raise their head out of the water. They simply lie there. Simon is not quite sure what to make of the unsettling sight, and it takes him a while to connect the red liquid with blood. He whimpers softly, letting go of their hand. It floats limply in the strong current.

Simon can see the network of branches that have trapped them. There is another, looking for a moment like they may have flung an arm over a branch to anchor themselves, and Simon tries to crawl a little closer.

He looks at their face and where their eyes should be are dark holes, black and red, torn and bleeding.

He cries out, scrambling back quickly, scraping his feet as he struggles up to a higher branch. The person’s head lolls back in the water, their mouth hanging open, and their eyes gone. Their whole face is scratched up and red. That’s the moment when Simon realises these people are dead, killed by the black monster and the water. He wraps his arms and legs tight around his branch and stares and stares and stares. He is silent with the shear amount of fear. Tears stream down his face but he hardly notices them, simply staring at the corpses and holding tight to the tree. He thinks about his mum and dad, about his brothers, and their faces combine with those of the two bodies before him – his father lying face-down in the water, Thomas beside him; his mother with her eyes gone, Lucas with his body torn and red with blood.

A sob bubbles from his chest then, but it’s a silent cry, unlike that of a child. A sob of fear and loss, but not a wail for help. Simon doesn’t think there is anyone left to help; there is no point crying out for it. He simply clings to the branch, watches the water rush by endlessly, and stares at something he has never faced before in his short life; death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an article with Maria Belon:
> 
> "...Simon had nightmares about monsters missing eyes. “When my husband found Simon, he [was near] two corpses-one without an eye,” says Belon."


End file.
